History Sandbox / SawMarkHoffman

* BondVillainStupidity: Averted in ''Saw 3D''. Once he gets Jill into the Reverse Bear Trap, Hoffman stands there and watches until she dies, which she notably didn't do when she put him in the same situation in the previous movie.

* SpreeKiller: Seeing as his cover as a Jigsaw killer is blown, Hoffman decides to go all-out against the police force in ''Film/Saw3D'', killing everyone he comes across with either his bare hands or any weapons he can get his hands on, eventually ending with him locking Jill in the original Reverse Bear Trap, which goes off successfully.
* TheStarscream: A flashback in ''Saw VI'' reveals that he blackmailed Amanda into failing her test in ''III'', setting off the chain of events that led to the deaths of both her and John in quick succession. Jill later caught onto this deception, and [[PayEvilUntoEvil angrily tries to sabotage Hoffman's test]].

* SpreeKiller: Seeing as his cover as a Jigsaw killer is blown, Hoffman decides to go all-out against the police force in ''Saw 3D'', killing everyone he comes across with either his bare hands or any weapons he can get his hands on, eventually ending with him locking Jill in the original Reverse Bear Trap, which goes off successfully.

* UncertainDoom: Whether Hoffman perished from Lawrence imprisoning him is currently left in the air. Although WordOfGod in ''Saw 3D''[='s=] DVDCommentary indicated he died (and that Gordon removed any means Hoffman could have taken advantage of to free himself, like the toilet lid Eric Matthews used to smash his foot in ''Saw III''), Costas Mandylor was asked to reprise his role, but this was put on hold with changes to developmental plans for future installments in the series. Since the release of ''Spiral'', Darren Lynn Bousman claimed that there are discussions to bring back Hoffman for a later movie.

* BatmanGambit: A small part of Hoffman's plan to catch Jill in ''Film/Saw3D'' is a pretty extreme case of this, as it requires the explosion he sets off in the scrapyard to distract every single officer present for several minutes while he opens up a bodybag, removes the body from it, moves it two rooms over, poses it and then [[BodybagTrick crawls back into the bodybag]], all without anyone noticing.

* BatmanGambit: A small part of Hoffman's plan to get Jill is a pretty extreme case of this, as it requires the explosion he sets off in the scrapyard to distract every single officer present for several minutes while he opens up a bodybag, removes the body from it, moves it two rooms over, poses it and then [[BodybagTrick crawls back into the bodybag]], all without anyone noticing.

* SelfSurgery: At the beginning of ''Film/Saw3D'', he stitches the tear that the Reverse Bear Trap 2.0 left on his right cheek to stop the immense bleeding. By the time it's fully healed, it gives his face the appearance of a half-GlasgowGrin.

* GeniusBruiser: Hoffman's both as smart as Jigsaw and much stronger.

* DecoyDamsel: In ''Saw IV'', as Rigg is first instructed, Hoffman is apparently captured alongside Eric in a trap by Art that will kill both of them in quick succession if he doesn't come in a given time. While said thing ''does'' happen due to Rigg not getting that he had to wait during said time ''before'' being able to enter the room Eric and Hoffman were trapped in without problem, Hoffman takes off his restraints, with an accompanying flashback clarifying that he was the one in control of the room, not Art.
* DetectiveMole: He's implied to have had the major role of finding crimes for victims during the time John was alive, and a flashback from ''Saw V'' shows that he was the one who warned John about Tapp.

** In ''Saw VI'', Jill knocks out Hoffman and straps an updated Reverse Bear Trap on him with no means of escape, as she had also strapped him to a chair before activating it. In desperation, Hoffman breaks his own hand to get it out of a strap to unstrap his other hand, then smashes the Reverse Bear Trap between bars to delay it from opening all the way in order to get it off. He manages to hack it, but still gets his right cheek ripped open.
** In ''Saw 3D'', despite being the most wanted criminal in the city, he decimates an entire police department and SWAT team simultaneously to get revenge on Jill. Even after Lawrence traps him in the end, Hoffman rushes for a hacksaw in reach to either attack Lawrence or immediately saw off his foot to escape his predicament.

* DrowningMySorrows: One of the flashbacks in ''Saw V'' features him drinking alcoholic drinks at a bar to emphasize his depression at the moment. It's implied in flashbacks taking place at similar points in ''Saw 3D'' that this ended up boiling into alcoholism, hence Hoffman's unusual open violence towards others outside of his typical killing job.

* EvilAllAlong: After being set up as a major ally of Rigg throughout ''Saw IV'', he's revealed to be another Jigsaw apprentice at the end.

* FalseFriend: To Rigg. He defends Rigg from a brutality charge, and offers him some words of comfort when he expresses despair at Kerry's death. In truth, he's a Jigsaw apprentice, helped Amanda put Kerry in her trap, and coldly leaves Rigg to die after revealing his true colors at the end of ''Saw IV''.

* FirstEpisodeTwist: To a lesser extent than usual. Hoffman is revealed to be an apprentice at the end of ''Saw IV'' (the fourth film in the nine-installment series), and takes up the mantle of BigBad from ''Saw V'' to ''Saw 3D'' (a film more than John had, making him the longest-tenured Big Bad overall).
* FiveSecondForeshadowing: In ''Saw IV'', when the water melting from the ice block Eric is standing upon reaches the electric chair that Hoffman is strapped to, a voltage sound is heard, but Hoffman isn't explicitly seen being electrocuted. For ''Saw IV'' being one of the goriest films in the series, it's strange that a more mundane death like electrocution would happen offscreen, and this is shortly before the WhamShot with Hoffman standing out of the chair.

** At one point in ''Saw IV'', Hoffman can be seen carrying the stuffed animal that Jeff's daughter Corbett was seen with in ''Saw III''. Asides from being a subtle hint towards him being a Jigsaw apprentice and the SequencingDeception between the two films, this also hints that he was going to eventually free Corbett, which doesn't happen until ''Saw V''.

** The reveal in ''Saw VI'' that Hoffman was the one who wrote the letter Amanda read in ''Saw III'' was also foreshadowed well back into ''Saw IV'', where Hoffman is already seen putting the letter inside the correspondent drawer in the same scene as the above example.

* GlasgowGrin: He receives half of one after narrowly escaping the Reverse Bear Trap 2.0 in ''Saw VI'' and stitching the resulting torn right cheek at the beginning of ''3D''. When he grabs Jill, the first thing he tells her is to take attention to his stitched cheek, asking how he looks.

* HumanShield: He was quick to use Sachi as one the moment his identity as a Jigsaw apprentice was revealed in ''Saw VI'', specifically as a barrier between himself and Perez as the latter instinctively fires her pistol while blinded by the lab's lack of lightning after Hoffman cut the power, inadverently killing Sachi. It doesn't take long before Hoffman throws Sachi's corpse away and immediately stabs Perez several times.

** The first one chronologically is explained by Gibson in ''Saw 3D''. When Gibson tried to report him for engaging in police misconduct, Hoffman received a promotion between unknown ranks because of a lack of evidence to be seen by the department (thus, they saw him as merely achieving worthy accomplishments), while Gibson was transferred to his present position at the InternalAffairs Division (much to Gibson's dismay).

* ArchEnemy: To Strahm, who was the first law enforcement officer to figure that he's a Jigsaw apprentice. While their fight lasts for little more than one film, with Hoffman being the winner by getting Strahm killed and framed for a while, Strahm's partner Perez and their superior Erickson eventually become suspicious of Hoffman too, and pursue him during the investigation of Strahm's death and the reopening of the case regarding Hoffman's first victim.

** The first one chronologically is explained by Gibson in ''Saw 3D''. When Gibson tried to report him for engaging in police misconduct, Hoffman received a promotion between unknown ranks because of a lack of evidence to be seen by the department (thus, they saw him as merely achieving worthy accomplishments), while Gibson was transferred to his present position at the Internal Affairs Division (much to Gibson's dismay).

* GlasgowGrin: He receives half of one after narrowly escaping the Reverse Bear Trap 2.0 in ''Saw VI'' and stitching the resulting torn right cheek at the beginning of ''3D''.

* DirtyCop: Besides becoming one of Jigsaw's apprentices and eventually succeeding him, Hoffman uses his knowledge of the legal system and due process to keep other cops off of his trail. Because of the latter, he was seen as a ByTheBookCop by most of the department before he was exposed as Jigsaw's successor; the department's leadership saw nothing wrong with him when Gibson reported him to them for killing a criminal who willingly raised his hands to him, and in a written message from Tapp in ''VideoGame/SawIIFleshAndBlood'', he mentions that he'd want to keep Hoffman out of his police activities, out of worry that Hoffman might not approve of his CowboyCop tendencies.

Jigsaw's second canonical apprentice and the third full-term Jigsaw Killer (after Amanda Young), Mark Hoffman started out as a detective of the Metropolitan Police Department's Homicide Division simply assigned to the Jigsaw case. He used the knowledge he acquired of Jigsaw by virtue of following the case to murder Seth Baxter using Jigsaw's MO, after the latter was freed from his life imprisonment for his killing of Hoffman's sister Angelica Acomb (whom Seth dated and [[DomesticAbuse abused]] beforehand) on a technicality. This frame job made it to the news and caught John Kramer's attention, who blackmails Hoffman into helping him. Not long afterwards, Hoffman became John's first full-tenured apprentice after the latter's initial attempt with Logan Nelson, doing a good bulk of jobs before Amanda (whom he constantly competed against for John's praise) came in.

* VillainousBreakdown: After escaping the Reverse Bear Trap 2.0 in ''Saw VI'', he drops all his pretense of the Jigsaw philosophy and leans fully into an AxCrazy psychopath over the course of ''3D''. This outcome triggers John's plan to [[SummonBiggerFish enlist Dr. Gordon to put him down for good]].

-->'''John:''' ''(after seeing Hoffman forcibly throwing an unconscious Timothy out of a wheelbarrow)'' That's a human being. Do you like how brutality feels, Mark?\\

* SerratedBladeOfPain: A serrated knife. It's the tool he uses to cut out jigsaw puzzle pieces from dead victims in the traps that he sets up (in contrast to John's more professional scalpel), and his primary weapon for direct murders. Dr. Heffner takes notice of the former case because of the resulting skin abrasions around the posthumous wounds, in comparison to the neater borders of those cut with John's scalpel.

** While most of Hoffman's later victims were handpicked from John's will and for him to set up the respective games, one of the few he tests of his own accord is [[DeathByRacism a gang of neo-nazi skinheads]] for his Horsepower Trap. Given how he uses one of the skinheads' corpses as a decoy for a BodybagTrick, it's strongly implied that he didn't mean to let any of them come out alive, and simply set up a trap as part of his grand scheme in ''Saw 3D''.

* SerratedBladeOfPain: A serrated knife. It's the tool he uses to cut out jigsaw puzzle pieces from dead victims in the traps that he sets up (in contrast to John's more professional scalpel), and his primary weapon for direct murders.

* TheStarscream: A flashback in ''Saw VI'' reveals that he blackmailed Amanda into failing her test in ''III'', setting off the chain of events that led to the deaths of both her and John in quick succession. Jill later caught onto this deception, and [[KickTheSonOfABitch angrily tries to sabotage Hoffman's test]].

* BastardUnderstudy:

* BastardUnderstudy[=/=]DeceptiveDisciple: Basically extorted into becoming an underling of Jigsaw, he wasn't interested in John's philosophy and tried to undermine his relationship with Amanda. Eventually, when John and Amanda die, he turns the Jigsaw name into his own joyride, killing either just because, to simply continue the games as he was ordered, to keep his double life secret, or to exact personal revenge on people whom he believes have wronged him.

* DrowningMySorrows: One of the flashbacks in ''Saw V'' features him drinking alcoholic drinks at a bar to emphasize his depression at the moment. It's implied in flashbacks taking place at similar points in the whole franchise that this ended up boiling into alcoholism, hence Hoffman's unusual open violence towards others outside of his typical killing job.

* TheStoic: He's a very composed and usually inexpressive person, like John and unlike Amanda. However, [[NotSoStoic this goes completely out the window]] when Jill nearly kills him.

* WifeBasherBasher: His first full-on murder victim (after he had at least one person killed more incidentally beforehand) was a {{Domestic Abuse}}r who [[YouKilledMyFather killed his sister]].

* YouKilledMyFather:

* DirtyCoward: Played with. As Seth Baxter gets chopped in half by his pendulum trap, he can't even look at his gruesome death. He's then brought into Jigsaw's fold without going through a real game, and brazenly claims he doesn't need one because he appreciates his life. When he ''is'' finally tested, however, [[VillainousValour he defeats his test without any real means to escape]]!

* KillerCop: .

* StartOfDarkness: ''Saw V'' explored his Start of Darkness in detail. To summarize it, he had a mental breakdown upon the death of his sister, and it's his Jigsaw-framed murder of her abusive boyfriend and killer what led John to forcibly recruit him into the Jigsaw mantle via blackmail.

* WifeBasherBasher: His first murder victim was a {{Domestic Abuse}}r who [[YouKilledMyFather killed his sister]].

* ImpromptuTracheotomy[=/=]SlashedThroat: If an opportunity presents itself, Hoffman won't hesitate to use any nearby sharp tool to attack someone by the throat. Most notably, he slashes Erickson's jugular vein when his identity is exposed in ''Saw VI'', and he kickstarts his precinct massacre in ''3D'' by stabbing Heffner's throat.